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Viral Possibilities: Media, the Body, and the Phenomenon of Infection

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Viral Possibilities: Media, the Body, and the Phenomenon of Infection Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-12-2015 12:00 AM Viral Possibilities: Media, the Body, and the Phenomenon of Infection Daniel McFadden The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Tim Blackmore The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Daniel McFadden 2015 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation McFadden, Daniel, "Viral Possibilities: Media, the Body, and the Phenomenon of Infection" (2015). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2999. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2999 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VIRAL POSSIBILITIES: MEDIA, THE BODY, AND THE PHENOMENON OF INFECTION A Monograph by Daniel McFadden Graduate Program in the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Daniel McFadden 2015 ii Abstract This thesis examines how the concept of virality is articulated in popular culture, and the connection that this articulation shares with notions of the virus in philosophical thought. The first chapter traces the emergence of a new wave of virus media following the geopolitical changes following the end of the Cold War, and the further shifts that have occurred in how the virus is culturally considered. The second chapter examines the politics of a phenomenological encounter with media depicting viruses. The third and final chapter discusses how understandings of the virus shape the notion of community as both a material and metaphysical construct. Keywords Viruses, outbreak, biopolitics, film phenomenology, community, immunity, media studies, Baudrillard, Derrida, Sobchack iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism for harboring my research. Amongst many others, I would like to thank my supervisory team of Dr. Tim Blackmore and Dr. Christopher Keep for their enduring support. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Plates ....................................................................................................................... v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 : Etiology ............................................................................................................ 8 Chapter 2 : The Phenomenology of Infection ................................................................... 33 Chapter 3 : Community and Immunity ............................................................................. 57 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 87 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 92 v List of Plates Plate 1: Opening pages of The Hot Zone ................................................................................ 15 Plate 2 : Kevin Spacey in Outbreak ........................................................................................ 27 Plate 3: Gwyneth Paltrow in Contagion ................................................................................. 28 Plate 4: Stills from Outbreak : Casey's moment of infection .................................................. 44 Plate 5: Still from Outbreak : Casey's infected body ............................................................... 46 Plate 6: Still from Antiviral : Hannah's body become cell garden ........................................... 84 1 Introduction I would like to being this investigation with a quote from an interview with Jacques Derrida entitled “The Rhetoric of Drugs”: There may be natural poisons and indeed naturally lethal poisons, but they are not as such ‘drugs.’ As with addiction, the concept of drugs supposes an instituted and an institutional definition: a history is required, and a culture, conventions, evaluations, norms, an entire network of intertwined discourses, a rhetoric, whether explicit or elliptical. We will surely come back to this rhetorical dimension. There is not in the case of drugs any objective, scientific, physical (physicalistic), or ‘naturalistic’ definition (or rather there is: this definition could be ‘naturalistic,’ if by this we understand that it attempts to naturalize that which defies any natural definition or any definition of natural reality). One can claim to define the nature of a toxin; however, not all toxins are drugs, nor are they considered as such. Already one must conclude that the concept of drugs is not a scientific concept, but is rather instituted on the basis of moral or political evaluations: it carries in itself both norm and prohibition, allowing no possibility of description or certification—it is a decree, a buzzword (mot d'ordre). Although Derrida here is discussing the concept of drugs, there is a parallel to be made between how drugs are conceived, in this sense, and with how we culturally treat the notion of the virus. True that unlike drugs the virus has a defined biological category; the definition of this category is, however, contested and precarious. The being of the virus is one fraught 2 with uncertainty. Overlapping discourses and metaphors 1 are so prominent in thinking about the virus that the biological thing that we call virus threatens being obscured or emptied by the metaphors of contagion that the virus inculcates. Even empirically, there is continued debate as to whether the virus constitutes life or something else: despite its seeming conceptual stability, the virus remains in many ways undecided. Another important analog between drugs and the virus is the shared feature of each concept deriving culturally from the convergence of several discourses, alongside the utilization of these concept in the governance of our societies. This thesis will investigate the complexities of one of the facets of this matrix that drives our understanding of the virus: the relationship between the virus and the media that portrays infection and outbreak. As the web of meaning for this concept is dense, looking into this one facet reveals shapes of the others. My argument here will be that the virus depicted in media shapes our understanding of our bodies, both individual and communal, and that this understanding is borne out of a politically charged history and laced with ideological posturing. The virus and drugs also happen to share an etymology: in the original Latin, the word virus connotes something toxic. As Derrida points out, there is significant work done in turning a toxic object into the concept of drugs, and likewise the transformation of the pseudo-organism of the virus into a diverse metaphor for contagion and danger requires a creative interpretation of our world, an interpretation and iteration that in turn alters the world in reaction to its image. Viruses, like drugs, today play an instrumental role in 1 The use of metaphor in this thesis will include both its standard meaning, “a figure of speech in which a name or descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to, that to which it is literally applicable; an instance of this, a metaphorical expression” (Oxford English Dictionary), as well as the further notion that these figures influence perspective, “George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have proposed that metaphors are much more than rhetorical devices for conveying complex ideas. As we form the associations they invite us to make, we do not just learn how to speak and write—we learn how to think” (Otis 3). 3 governance: both national and international policies surrounding these things affect people, borders and perspectives as much as do the things that bear these names. I would like to end the comparison between drugs and the virus for the time being, but I would also like to keep in mind that these are amongst a wide set of highly intensified, diversified and flexible concepts that are mobilized in the exercise of power today. The overarching method of this paper will be addressing the instrumentality of the virus, and coming to a conceptual understanding of virality via its employment in contemporary culture. For the individual body, the virus works in a system of discipline for biopolitical motivation: thus the ideas of Michel Foucault will be used to examine the types of subjectivity that are forged in the concept of the virus. The discipline required for the actuation
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